Humor Me: Talking trash and energy

Trash; it's something we create daily and often stop thinking about once it is thrown away.

The average American produced 4.5 pounds of waste each day in 2008, according to figures from the Environmental Protection Agency.

About 1.1 pounds of that waste was recycled and about 0.5 pounds was sent to composting, including yard waste.

In total, 24.3 percent of waste was recycled, 8.9 percent was composted and 66.8 percent was sent to a landfill or incinerated.

In recent years, lawmakers have increased standards on how much waste municipal waste haulers can landfill.

This was an effort to improve what was deemed a "carbon footprint," which is how much greenhouse gases are developed by haulers disposing trash in a landfill instead recycling or reusing the waste for energy.

It might sound weird to utilize waste for energy, but Sweden appears to have developed a system that works so well they want to start importing other nations' trash for disposal.

This country prides itself in being the best or among the best in matters ranging from sports to industry.

On this matter, the U.S. is leaps and bounds behind.

The average Swede produces about one-half ton of waste each year or about 2.7 pounds per day, according to Swedish waste hauler Avfall Sverige.

But of that waste, about 50 percent is recycled and only 4 percent is put into landfills.

The successful Swedish model incinerates waste to produce energy for power and heat.

"Waste to energy," as it's known, first started in Sweden in the early 20th century, with the first plant opened in 1904 and a massive expansion during the 1970s.

Waste must first be painstakingly separated so that materials that could be recycled or must be disposed of in others ways is not present.

After the separation process is complete, the material to be incinerated is put into a bunker, where several days worth of waste is stored.

A crane operator picks up piles and places the waste into a hopper for the first phase of incineration. Temperatures inside the incinerator stay above 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

Gases rise up out of the incinerator, while the combustible material is consumed. Leftover material, known as "slag," is dropped into a water-filled trough, to be sorted and recycled.

The incinerator uses the heat generated from burning the waste to turn water into steam for power, including heating and electricity.

Waste incineration provides heat and electricity for more than 20 percent of the homes in Sweden.

By contrast, waste incineration powers about 0.3 percent of homes in the U.S.

Norway currently pays Sweden to take its garbage for waste incineration. Sweden is also looking to import waste from Bulgaria, Romania and Italy because the countries rely heavily on landfills.

Obviously, the U.S. is still heavily reliant on landfills. The differences between Sweden's numbers and ours in regards to amount of waste sent to landfill is astonishing.

But Sweden has used the waste to energy model for more than 100 years.

Sweden is also much less populated than the U.S., with about 9.5 million people, which is about the population of North Carolina.

But that isn't an excuse for how little the waste to energy model is in use here.

I can't think of a reason why this model isn't being used in our country. We generate such a vast amount of waste and then we hide it in landfills, where it will degrade slowly over long periods of time.

Too often it seems, when the U.S. is far behind the world in other matters such as solar and wind power, the country has a hard time catching up and becoming a leader.

China, for example, has led the way in recent years with renewable energy production.

But waste reduction is a matter this country cannot overlook. We can only hide our trash in landfills for so long before we run out of places to put it.

I think it's time to embrace the waste to energy model. It sounds like the best way to put our bad habits to good use.